Description
While conservative and right-wing politicians are loath to acknowledge colonial debt and tend to deny responsibility for refugees due to harms caused by foreign policies, their statements about the duty to protect Afghan interpreters, employed by Western armies are rife with references to ‘indebtedness’, and ‘betrayal’, if this debt is not honoured. For instance, UK Home Secretary Priti Patel stated that “we owe an immense debt of gratitude to the brave individuals who have worked side by side with our Armed Forces”. This paper interrogates this language of indebtedness by drawing on Marcel Mauss’ theory of gift-exchange (1925), following Heins, Unrau and Avram’s proposal (2018) to apply his work to International Relations. In Mauss’ gift theory, the receiver of the original gift is haunted by debt if they have not offered a return gift. Recognising this gift logic opens up interesting questions about ethics and accountability and helps situate Afghans’ claims to protection in relation to historical demands for rights by other marginalised and non-citizens (African Americans; indigenous people; women) who supported war efforts.
